[fund] co-optation by politico-religious and/or conservative forces

A 29-year-old divorcee in Bahrain has been receiving death threats and anonymous phone calls after being interviewed about her case on Al Hurra television on November 25th 2006. During the interview, mother-of-three Suad Mohammed Fathalla spoke alongside Women's Petition Committee head Ghada Jamsheer and Bahrain Center for Human Rights president Abdulhadi Al Khawaja.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has been shocked to receive a copy of a horrifying Fatwa’ (edict) issued by a cleric in the Darra Adam Khel area of the NWFP and has written to the interior minister asking him to do his duties.

A WLUML networker responds to recent news that the provincial assembly of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) passed the Hasba Bill to suppress vice, with a unit led by a cleric and a police force to implement its orders.

In 2005, an ostensibly marginal show of conceptual art installations called Caution, Religion! in the Sakharov Centre for Human Rights led to charges of, "inciting religious hatred and offending the feelings of religious believers."

A recent survey caused a stir by revealing how Malaysian Malays rate the importance of religion in their lives. Over 70 per cent of 1,000 Malays surveyed nationwide said they viewed themselves as Muslims first, Malaysians second, and Malays third.